108 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETT. 



its bursting contains fully formed a telescoped branch, bearing its 

 season's growth of leaves ; and that the flower bud contains a whole 

 cluster of apples. 



So the spring and summer only mature the branches, leaves, 

 flowers and fruit, that were born the year before. 



Next June the air will be full of perfume from the orchards and 

 we shall again enjoy the pink and white beauty of the tree-tops. A 

 bouquet of apple blossoms is on our table and the child takes one in 

 his hand, or if in his teens it may be that such things are beneath 

 his notice, and only playthings for four-year-olds or nosegays for 

 girls. 



But you and I have grown older ; we pity the poverty of his 

 mind and think of "Peter Bell :" 



"A primrose by the river's brim, 

 A yellow primrose was to bim, 

 Anil nothing more." 



Shall it never be anything more ? Shall not the school open his 

 eyes to seeing, and his mind to knowing the beauty about his home ? 



You take the flower and you see the tinted petals and green 

 sepals and the tuft of threads that stand on end in its center, and 

 the yellow powder that trembles on their tops ; and you think of 

 the work it is doing in the orchard. While the yellow legged bees 

 are buzzing back and forth from the hive, and the lazy butterflies 

 are drinking nectar from the blossoms, the pollen grains drop down, 

 and knock at the green doors below them ; they go in, and then 

 they awaken the tree babies asleep in their seed cradles, and feed 

 them and start them growing. 



That is what the blossoms are for, and not simply a holiday dress 

 for the tree, and when their work is done, the yellow pollen, the 

 thread-like stamens, and the beautiful petals of the corolla, say 

 good-bye to the baby apples and float away on the wind. The tree 

 has put on its every day wear of summer, but the little green sepals 

 of the calyx always remain and you can see them dry and dead, 

 opposite the stems of the apples you gather in the fall. 



Cut the apple across and you see the star shaped cove and the 

 brown seed within — full grown now, and dry and dead. Is it dead? 

 Pull off its brown coat and separate the white inside along the 

 line that passes lengthwise around it. At the pointed end we see 

 a little speck, which under a lens takes form and our seed is not a 

 seed, but a baby apple tree perfect in all its parts. 



It was rocked to sleep by the wind that scattered the leaves but 

 it is ready now to awaken in the earth, and send its roots down 



